


no mercy in a live wire

by resistate



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Canadian Walk of Fame, F/M, Friendship, Unhappy Relationship Ending, imaginary and non-graphic violence, mentions of other relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-29 22:24:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18303059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resistate/pseuds/resistate
Summary: You must always know how long to stay and when to go.





	no mercy in a live wire

**Author's Note:**

> Please read the tags before reading this fic.

//

Persistent knocking wakes Tessa from a sound sleep. Her phone tells her it’s twenty after three in the morning and she’d wonder who was banging down her hotel room door if she didn’t already know.

Scott’s outside, suspended in a round world. Distorted. Tessa lifts her face from the door; takes her robe from the back of the armchair. She folds the edges in on themselves and secures the tie before opening the door.

She catches him off-balance, hand striking at thin air. He rights himself and it’s almost comic, his recovery.

‘—You’re not Jackie,’ he says. He sounds indignant; confused.

Tessa knows she’s awake, but she massages the heels of her palms over her eyelids anyway. When she’s done, Scott’s still there. If he’s not drunk, Tessa will eat—fuck it. Eating anything is not an option. He’s drunk.

‘No,’ she says. ‘I’m not Jackie.’

Scott looks everywhere but at Tessa, like it might be the swirls in the carpet or the lurid wallpaper that’s speaking. He rocks back and forth on his heels and she can see how drunk he is in the bloodshot whites of his eyes; the faint tremor in his right hand.

For a split second she’s tempted to shut the door in his face and go back to bed.

‘How much have you had to drink,’ she says instead.

Scott frowns. ‘There was champagne at the thing—our thing. The thing. There was champagne.’

‘You smell like scotch,’ she points out.

Scott changes his story immediately, like he knows he’s been caught out but if he’s quick enough maybe she won’t notice. ‘I maybe had some beers, a couple of drinks. You shoulda come, Tess.’ He slurs her name so badly it sounds like one smashed up sibilant.

‘Scott.’ It comes out sharper than she means it to, and she winces. ‘I did,’ she adds. She’s satisfied with how level her voice is. She can tell by his face that he truly doesn’t believe her, though. He must be more wasted than she’d thought if he can’t remember that. She’d come out to one bar before leaving everyone else to it, and only because Scott had clearly felt like he needed to make the effort and insist, but still. She’d done it.

She can’t leave him here, not like this. She doesn’t trust him not to fall down the stairwell and break his neck instead of using the elevator like any reasonable person.

She steps aside. In her peripheral vision she sees Scott’s eyes dart toward her, then away. He enters the room and she closes the door. Tessa can smell the scotch on his breath even more strongly.

She doesn’t see any sign of Scott’s wallet, phone or key card. She steps forward without thinking, to check, and he recoils. It’s almost imperceptible. Almost. Tessa closes her eyes. Then she opens them, tells Scott to turn out his pockets. She tells him to take off his tuxedo jacket and hand it to her. She doesn’t know what he’s done with his winter coat and neither, it turns out, does he.

His pockets are empty.

She hesitates, not sure what to do. If she makes him go with her and he digs his heels in at any point, she won’t be able to budge him by herself. Not when he’s like this. She’d forgotten Scott’s stopped touching her whenever they’re alone. It makes her so angry, the implication that she would ever touch Scott if he didn’t want her to.

‘Wait here,’ she says. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

Scott doesn’t argue, just hovers in the space between the bed and the door. He looks uncertain. Lost. She’ll do as much as she can. She trades her robe for her pink fur coat; slips into flats; grabs her phone and key card. Her nightgown can pass for a slip dress at this hour.

Scott’s room is three floors up and two rooms closer to the elevator than Tessa’s. She knocks loudly for longer than is probably acceptable, considering the hour and the grandeur of this hotel neither of them is paying for out of pocket. No one comes out into the corridor to ask her to stop, politely or otherwise. No one answers Scott’s door.

On her way back to her room she sends a few texts: _Hey, I know it’s late and I’m sorry, but are you around right now? It’s nothing serious but get back to me if you can. Thanks!!_

She doesn’t see any of Scott’s things. When she gets back to her room he’s sitting slumped on the end of her bed. He looks up when she comes in and she thinks for a moment he’s going to say something. He doesn’t, in the end. He looks tired; worn thin. Tessa gets him a bottle of water from the minibar, twists off the cap and hands it to him. He gulps it down, throat working.

She decides she doesn’t want to take Scott to the desk and get him a new key card, not in the state he’s in. She checks her phone and then asks Scott where his brothers and cousin are. She doesn’t get anything useful. Tessa would be annoyed with Danny and Charlie and Cara for losing track of Scott, but no one should know better than she does that he’s his own person. He’s said it enough times recently.

‘Scott,’ she says. He raises his head to look at her, expectant.

‘What’s Jackie’s number?’

Scott fumbles in his pockets like he’s looking for his phone; frowns when he doesn’t find it.

‘It’s in my phone, but I don’t know where that is.’ He says this carefully, like maybe she won’t notice that he’s drunk if he enunciates.

Scott can sleep here, she supposes. The bed is a queen and there’s bound to be extra blankets.

‘We had a fight,’ he says, after a minute, out of nowhere. Tessa, pulling pillows off the top shelf of the closet, stills. They hadn’t, though. They’d had disagreements and tense silences, followed by careful, careful conversations. In the end they’d arrived at a mutual, if uneasy, agreement.

They hadn’t fought, not about any of it.

‘Me and Jackie,’ he says, when he notices she’s staring at him.

Oh.

He doesn’t say anything else, and Tessa doesn’t ask. She dumps the spare pillows and extra blankets on the bed. ‘Shoes,’ she says.

He bends over and starts untying his laces.

‘It was about you,’ Scott says, to his shoes. ‘All of our fights are about you.’

‘Scott—’ Tessa says. She can hear the edge in her voice, as if he’s holding a knife to her throat and she’s warning him he’d better take it away, now.

‘She doesn’t understand it’s not like that between us.’ He’s back to slurring his words. He takes one of his shoes off, tucks the laces inside, turns it over and over in his hands. The soles are blood red. He looks at her then and she can see the challenge in his eyes, like he’s daring her to tell him he’s wrong, after they talked about this so many times; after they agreed. She can’t tell if he’s trying to get a rise out of her or just not thinking. Whichever it is, he keeps looking at her, steadily, while the knife slides into her jugular vein with no more force than the simple truth. ‘She doesn’t understand you can’t give me what I want.’

Just because it’s the truth doesn’t mean it doesn’t split her in two and leave her for dead. She can’t move with the impact of it. She wants to stay still and safe and in this one place, like a ghost. If she doesn’t open her eyes no one will know she’s here. No one will see her bleeding out. She can’t, though. Stay here. Calmly, she thinks through what she needs. Calmly, she stands. Her wallet is in her clutch, her phone is on the desk along with her key card. She doesn’t know what she’s done with the flats she was just wearing. She spots the heels she wore to the event and grabs them. She leaves.

She stops in the hallway to pull on her shoes. It takes longer than it should because she keeps having to wait for her hands to stop shaking, but then they’re on and it helps. Tessa’s known for a long time that shoes can be like armour if armour is what’s needed.

She checks her phone again and realises she must not have switched it off silent after she woke up. She has two messages and two missed calls from Danny. She taps out a message saying where she’s staying and what room, and can he come and get Scott; she’s knows it’s an inconvenience, but please. He messages right away to say yes, of course. His hotel is down the street and he’ll be over in five minutes; ten, tops. Tessa pulls at the edges of her jacket, wrapping it around herself more tightly, and leans against the wall. She’s too worn out to stop the tears that escape against her will until, encouraged by how easy it is, she’s properly, silently, crying. It’s kind of Danny to come out in the middle of the night like this, and honestly, that’s the last straw. Just someone’s simple kindness.

She cuts herself off when Danny messages to say he’s in the lobby, pressing her palms against her eye sockets to dry her face and avoiding looking in the elevator mirror. Danny’s in jeans and a winter jacket, unzipped, plaid scarf around his neck, no hat or mitts. His hair’s a mess and he’s out of breath. He pulls her into a fierce hug as soon as he sees her. Tessa holds herself stiffly in his arms, knowing from experience that if she relaxes she’ll start crying again.

‘I’ll kill him,’ Danny says, once he pulls back. ‘I swear to god, Tessa, I will.’

‘If you killed him, I’d have to kill you,’ Tessa says. She forces a smile, tries to keep it light, but she would. She absolutely would. Anyone who causes Scott any harm won’t stand a chance against Tessa.

Danny shakes his head, expression pinched.

‘You’d miss him,’ Tessa says. ‘You would. And Alma would kill me.’

‘I wouldn’t miss hauling his ass home at four in the fucking morning,’ Danny mutters. ‘Fuck, Tess. I thought he was done with this shit, you know? I thought—’

He cuts himself off, like he knows it’s none of his business; like he doesn’t want to pry.

She can feel tears welling up again and she shakes her head, impatient with herself.

Danny looks away, clearly uncomfortable. After a moment he turns, a determined expression in his face. ‘Are you okay if we leave Scott for now and get a coffee or something? I’m guessing he’s gonna sleep it off.’

She guesses he will too. Scott will be fine. He’s always fine. He struggled after Sochi, but this time’s different. Tessa’s been the one struggling, and Scott has been there through everything because he’s Scott, and they’re friends. No matter what, he’s her best friend.

‘There’s a 24 hour place on the corner,’ Danny prods.

At her look he sighs. ‘The number of people who would kill me if I just took Scott right now and left is pretty high,’ he says. ‘My mother. Your mother. My wife. My kids. Charlie, probably.’

She doesn’t want to go out, but she doesn’t want to go back upstairs either. ‘If I can prevent more unnecessary murders, let’s do it,’ says Tessa.

Danny laughs, but it’s got an edge to it.

//

He insists on buying. Tessa lets him get her a coffee even though it’s going to mess up her hard-won sleep schedule, and provides the barest of outlines. His brother showed up drunk at her door: no coat, no phone, no wallet, no key card. She learns that Danny and Charlie had left to go back to their hotel around two. Scott and Jackie and Cara had stayed on, Danny tells her, and everything had seemed fine. He doesn’t have Jackie’s number yet either.

‘Scott’s an asshole when he’s drunk,’ Danny says.

Tessa shrugs. He can be. He’s open with his heart; it’s one of the things she loves best about him. He’s impulsive, sometimes, and he has a tendency, sometimes, to speak without thinking. Drunk, he’s brutally honest, even more of his filters gone. Tessa knows that his brothers kept the worst of Scott’s behaviour after Sochi from her. Still, she’d seen some of it.

‘I’m sure he didn’t mean whatever he said,’ Danny says, and seems surprised at Tessa’s sharp laugh.

Embarrassed, she picks at the edge of her paper cup. ‘Sorry. We’re pretty upset with each other right now, I think.’

She softens it for Danny but there’s no need for her to speculate, not really. _Upset_ isn’t even the word. In all their careful conversations about what they each wanted she hadn’t told Scott she was angry and he hadn’t told her he was angry, but his flat eyes and clenched jaw and the way he won’t even fucking touch her when no one else is around speak volumes. They don’t have the luxury, anymore, of the Olympics coming around every four years like clockwork. They’re not working toward a shared goal on a singular timeline. She doesn’t want the same things right now that he wants, and he doesn’t want to wait.

It’s simple, really.

‘You seemed okay earlier,’ Danny offers.

This, she doesn’t need to soften. There’s no edge to this at all. ‘We love each other and we’re proud of each other,’ she says.

She doesn’t know if Danny is gently prying or just trying to remind her that they’re Tessa and Scott. If it’s the latter, she knows. She knows that. She loves Danny like he’s her own brother, but the details are none of his business.

They need a break, is all.

‘Can you come get Scott in the morning?’ she asks, getting up and throwing her cup into the recycling.

‘Yeah, of course,’ Danny says. ‘I can get him now, if you want?’

She doesn’t have the heart to wake him up and kick him out, even after everything.

‘Come by in the morning,’ she says.

//

Scott’s asleep when she gets back to her room, sprawled out on what used to be his side of the bed. Tessa washes her face and brushes her teeth to get rid of the taste of coffee and trick her brain into thinking it’s not the middle of the night. She gets another bottle of water from the minibar and puts it on the bedside table next to Scott. She climbs carefully onto the other side of the bed and does her best not to toss and turn. She wakes up an indeterminate time later, Scott wrapped around her. It’s still dark outside, and he probably thinks he’s holding Jackie, except that the way he’s brushed back her hair before planting his face in her neck is because of Tessa, because she doesn’t like the way his breath tickles her hair against her neck while she’s trying to sleep. The way his little finger on the hand of the arm flung over Tessa rests alongside Tessa’s little finger is because of Tessa, because he knows she cherishes that connection, even in sleep. She hates that this is when she falls apart again; hates that she tries to stay as still as possible to avoid waking Scott. He deserves to see the blood pooling around her. (He doesn’t; he doesn’t deserve it at all, but she wants him to, and she hates that too.)

He does wake, hand moving restlessly up and down her arm. ‘C’mon, Tess,’ he mumbles into her neck. ‘Is okay. Don’t cry.’

She shakes her head in denial even though the truth must be obvious. She doesn’t know how awake he even is, but Scott pulls her closer to him. ‘I’ll kill them,’ he says, voice earnest with sleep. ‘Whoever’s making you cry, I’ll kill them.’

His breathing evens out then, and his arm around her softens. Tessa waits until she’s sure he’s asleep and eases herself out from under him. His arm flails for a moment before he rolls over onto his other side, dead to the world.

She calls the front desk and books a second room, pays for it out of pocket. She can afford it. She shoves her toiletries bag into one of her suitcases; she can get the rest of her things later. She writes a note for Scott, letting him know Danny will be by in the morning, and a note for Jackie, letting her know that Scott had showed up drunk on her doorstep and was spending the night. She doesn’t say _drunk_ or _spending the night_. She says, _had a little too much to drink_ and _was sleeping it off_.

She pushes Jackie’s note under Scott’s door. Her hand brushes the metal sill, setting off a spark of static electricity, and she jerks, stung and suddenly present. She regrets the note almost immediately, stomach twisting uncomfortably. If she were Jackie, she’d want to know that Scott was safe. She doesn’t want Jackie to worry. There’s nothing in the note that’s not innocuous or untrue. Still, she admits the reason she was prepared, a moment ago, to let things get messy for Scott isn’t innocuous at all. She knows it’s because of Scott’s reaction to the reaction he’d provoked earlier in Tessa. When she had stood rooted to the spot, too injured to move, and he had smiled, small and satisfied. It had been fleeting, disappearing almost as soon as it had arrived, but it had been there. She had seen it.

He’s angry she didn’t choose him and she’s angry he didn’t choose her. They’ll take the break they clearly need, let time and distance smooth over this rough edge. What’s done is done, and when it comes down to it, when everything else is stripped away, Scott is—

She’ll call him next week to see how he’s doing, or he’ll call her, and they’ll see each other in the new year. They have commitments.

She takes her suitcase by the handle and leaves.

//

**Author's Note:**

> Rewind I guess to December when I was working through some 'when you and your best friend are mad at each other because of reasons but you’d kill anyone who harmed a hair on their head and they’d kill anyone who harmed a hair on yours' things and fast-forward please to now and Scott smiling about Florida and Tessa telling Scott he’s doing amazing, sweetie and soft training sessions with Sam etc etc.
> 
> Title and summary from 'Let Him Fly' by Patty Griffin.


End file.
